Salesforce reported $11.35 billion in quarterly revenue and 104 trillion customer records ingested as AI agent adoption accelerated, with CEO Marc Benioff declaring fears of a "SaaSpocalypse" unfounded.
Salesforce reported revenue of $11.35 billion for its most recent quarter, growing 11% year over year, as the company's expanding suite of AI agents fueled a surge in enterprise data volumes and undercut the prevailing narrative that artificial intelligence would hollow out the software industry.
The results reversed a prolonged period of skepticism toward enterprise software stocks — a sell-off that, according to some analysts, erased roughly $2 trillion in software market value over the past year amid fears that large language models would render traditional software platforms obsolete.
CEO Marc Benioff pushed back forcefully on that thesis. "The 'SaaSpocalypse' narrative has been such nonsense," Benioff said in an appearance on CNBC with Jim Cramer following the Wednesday earnings report. He noted that net new average order value growth was the strongest in four years, attrition was near its lowest level ever, and bookings more than doubled quarter over quarter.
On the AI side, Salesforce's Data Cloud platform, branded Data 360, ingested 104 trillion customer records during the quarter — a 355% increase year over year. The company delivered 3.2 billion units of agentic work in the period, nearly double the prior quarter's figure.
Agentforce, Salesforce's autonomous AI agent product, grew from $100 million to over $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue within 18 months of its launch, a 240% year-over-year increase. Combined AI and data ARR for the company reached $3.9 billion, more than tripling in a single year.
Non-GAAP operating margins came in at 34.1%. Adjusted earnings of $5.90 per share nearly doubled compared to analyst consensus estimates of roughly $3.27. Management raised full-year guidance to as much as $46.4 billion, and current remaining performance obligations grew 14%, signaling durable forward revenue.
Shares surged more than 20% following the report.
The earnings also coincided with the debut of Claudeforce, a jointly developed product bringing together Anthropic's Claude model and Salesforce's CRM platform. Benioff framed the partnership as confirmation of the company's data thesis rather than a threat to it: "The No. 1 AI in the world, Anthropic, and the No. 1 CRM, Salesforce, coming together," he said. He added that AI models "depend on CRM ... They do not replace them."
Further supporting that view, nine of the top 10 AI companies now run on Salesforce and Slack, with their combined spending on those platforms up 435% year over year — a fact Benioff described as decisive evidence that frontier model developers have concluded proprietary enterprise data remains indispensable.
Analysts at Wells Fargo offered a framing consistent with Benioff's argument. "Lower cost of intelligence increases value of incumbent data," the firm said, reflecting a view that as AI model capability becomes commoditized through competition and falling inference costs, the value in the AI stack migrates toward companies controlling trusted, proprietary datasets.
Salesforce also announced a $25 billion share buyback, which the company described as the largest in its history.
Salesforce was not the only software company to report strong results tied to AI demand this week. CrowdStrike reported revenue growth of 26%, with CEO George Kurtz citing AI-powered cyberattacks as a driver of enterprise spending on stronger defenses. Salesforce surged 22% and CrowdStrike jumped roughly 20% on Thursday as results rippled through the broader software sector.
Whether this quarter represents a structural rerating of enterprise software or a singular beat will depend on whether Salesforce's data flywheel — agents generate work, work generates data, data deepens competitive positioning — continues to compound at current rates as more AI companies build atop its platform.
Marc Sabatini is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering enterprise software, cybersecurity, and the regulatory beats that shape both. He focuses on the deal flow and policy decisions that move markets.
More from Marc →U.S. District Judge Rita Lin ruled that the Department of Defense violated the First Amendment by designating Anthropic a supply chain risk in retaliation for the company's public criticism of the administration's AI policies. Anthropic's parallel lawsuit in Washington, D.C., remains ongoing.
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